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The Taliban opened their office in Qatar last week over the protests of the Afghan government. And if you think that the Taliban ins there to talk about peace, well, you’re mistaken. They hung their own flag outside the office and put a plaque on the building that identifying themselves as “The Political Office of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan”, you know, like they had won the war. Needless to say, Hamid Karzai was a little less than pleased. The Stars & Stripes reports;

But with images of Taliban representatives raising their flag and referring to The Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan — as the country was known when the Taliban were in power — Karzai reacted by immediately suspending government participation in any peace talks. He also suspended talks over a bilateral security agreement with the United States that is key to keeping American troops in the country after international forces end their combat role in 2014.

The quarrel has simmered ever since.

I wonder if Karzai has had night time talks with the ghost of Duong Van Minh, the last president of South Vietnam, yet. Oh, by the way, the Taliban removed the flag and the plaque from their office location, and the Qatari police took away their flag pole. But, it’s clear to me that Taliban thinks that just by virtue of upcoming “peace talks” that they have won because we’re weak and rushing for the exit.

Comments (5)

No matter how we exit, the Taliban will claim victory so long as one of them has a video camera and a internet connection to proclaim that because they survived the last 12 years they won. It doesn’t matter how many key leaders we killed, how many rank and file we slaughtered in a FLIR video from an Apache, if one of these rats can crawl out from under the ruble after we go home, they have won in their mind. It has something to do with the Muslim world view. Hell, the Egyptians still claim they won the Yom Kippur war simply because they made it across the canal and caught the IDF flatfooted. Never mind they got tossed back across and the IDF crossed and was going for the throat when we pulled them back after the Soviets threatened to go thermal.

But, it’s clear to me that Taliban thinks that just by virtue of upcoming “peace talks” that they have won because we’re weak and rushing for the exit.

There is no other conclusion to be drawn from this sadly, it’s a historical reality. We are holding a demilitarized zone in South Korea for 50 years with an ever boisterous and dangerous opponent still active north of that zone, we left South Vietnam to fail on its own, we will leave Iraq to devolve into whatever it devolves into and Karzai and Afghanistan will falter as soon as we leave.

Any radical group opposed to the US and able to create a nation/state entity has to be emboldened by a seeming unwillingness on the part of the US to engage in a nation crushing war to force an opponent to its’ knees and take its’ nation away….you can lose every major battle to US ground forces and still win the war when the US leaves and does nothing to stop your reclamation of the US puppets left behind.

Too bad I will be dead 100 years from now to read what gets written about the nature of the post WW2 military of the US and its use by the government. It’s arguably the best trained military we’ve ever had as a nation. The most professional due to a lack of conscription, but ultimately might prove to be the least effective in promoting policy due to the ineffectual use of the asset by dim witted and weak minded civilian leadership, and an officer class more attracted to politics at the highest levels than service, duty, and honor.

@4-Proud, It won’t be the first time. The same scenario has been with us since RVN. Vets got the bums’ rush from Nixon, as well as his laying out “Vietnamization” (much like what’s going on in Afghanistan now) and it’s been going on since.

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We are all military combat veterans and we write primarily from that perspective. Everyone who writes here has a Combat Infantry Badge, a Combat Medic Badge, a Combat Action Badge or a Combat Action Ribbon. We write about issues that matter to combat veterans..read more »